


One Chance

by Captain_Panda



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Gen, Heart Attack, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark has a heart attack, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Panda/pseuds/Captain_Panda
Summary: "My left arm is numb. Is that normal?"Or: What happens when Tony's ticker stops ticking?
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 36
Kudos: 358





	One Chance

**Author's Note:**

> This fic, like all my fics, is Steve- and Tony-friendly. If my 500,000 word thesis isn't a strong enough demonstration of my dual loyalties, let me affirm here for new readers (welcome! Please enjoy your stay), that I do not house anti- sentiments for either party. I actually found myself at a crossroads prior to posting this fic: the whumpy concept, I knew at once I wanted to post, but the Civil War backdrop I knew could stir up strong feelings. 
> 
> Let me do my best to disclaim here, earnestly and outright, that I tried to present, as closely to canon as possible in the context of a "Tony is having a serious heart attack" fic, Tony's thoughts and Steve's thoughts regarding the Accords. I want to state outright that I am not striving to present either side as "right" or "wrong." 
> 
> The focus here is on the whump; the controversial backdrop makes this the opposite of a whumpy "PWP." I'm somewhat incapable of presenting a whumpy PWP, and ever since Ross mentioned his own heart attack and Tony brought up left arm pain, I've wanted to take a whack at it, hence the setting. I hope it fits your expectations and entertains you, and above all else, I do hope you find this a thrilling and satisfying experience.
> 
> Until our next adventure.  
> -Cap'n Panda
> 
> P.S. Why yes, I did make one minor canon adjustment, in a fic that features major canon-bending by the end of it. <3 Particularly detail-oriented readers might notice, but if you don't, that's perfectly in line with the story. It's meant to be wallpaper: fade into the background.

_A feeling of dread._ Noun.

It had no formal medical definition, not _really_. Excess fear. It was more than fear. It was one thing and nothing, a single sensation and a thousand anecdotal ripples. It was the feeling one experienced when one stepped into an elevator that started wheezing or a plane that started crying or a train that began to convulse. It was the crackle of a Geiger counter as it picked up radiation in an empty room, ticking up, up, _up_. It was the primeval growl of an animal lurking in the liquid black, waiting to pull one into a watery grave. It was the droning moan of a windstorm catapulting towards one screaming outcome: _tornado, tornado_. It was the ordinary accident, the unexpected pitch of a cliff where none had been anticipated, a body lunging into space and a hand flying backwards, far too late; it was the loose scrape of a pickax digging into unbridled soil as the mountain vanished underfoot and the plunge began, impossible to arrest.

It was the ordinary terrors, too: a feeling of dread was the unlocked door you had very certainly left closed.

A feeling of dread was easier to hand-wave than to define, to point to after and say, _I knew when the ice had truly broken_ even though the splinters on the surface seemed the same as every day prior. It was an emotion as surely as anger, joy, and sadness. But _dread_. Dread was an awful feeling. Dread was the fear of _death_. 

Dread was terror induced by anticipation; dread was the cosmic awakening of mortality, not merely a glimpse of something grand and terrible but a close encounter with it, the rapid realization that one would not merely glance but _encounter_ the jaws of death one was plunging towards. 

That, _that_ was a feeling of dread. It was the conjecture that the last tether to safety and normalcy had been severed, and the only way forward was down, down, down, into dark waters, into howling winds, into unimaginable terror, into the jaws of death. Survival was no longer the assured, default state of being. To survive was the indefinable goal, the desperate animal struggle to resist extinction. To run.

How did one run from one’s own body?

How did one escape from their own heaving lungs, respiring twenty-odd thousand times a day, each inhale loaded with life-giving breath, each exhale expulsing life-caving poison? How could one police the four extremities, capable of going nowhere at all from each other, bound by the same mortal skin? How could one expel poison from lifeblood or disease from core tissue, intertwined as they were? 

Moreover, how could a body so resilient in nature crumple so easily if the ticker stopped ticking? And why, oh why, would an animal that had two lungs, two kidneys, two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, two of nearly every necessary item, a near perfect toolkit of symmetrical life—have only _one_ heart?

It was very easy, the _why_ : because hearts were _expensive_. They were hard to buy on the evolutionary market and even harder to upkeep. They were machines that demanded as much as the lonely brain, the singular and invaluable—for the most crucial machines in the human body, there could only _be_ one. They were simply too precious to clone. One would have to do the job, and simply never fail. One would have to be enough, every time.

Tony Stark’s heart was not enough. Not this time. And he _knew it_.

“. . . would appear, sir, to be in our best interest to move forward with the flight plan—”

“Already locked and loaded,” Tony Stark interrupted, stepping away from the circle and cutting the Vision off. Back to the gathering, he swallowed a rock and cast a surreptitious glance at his watch. He wasn’t checking the time, and the result wasn’t 1:48 PM: it was 61 BPM. A perfectly normal reading, he consoled himself. His ticker was still ticking, even if he felt—“off” was a terribly unhelpful word, but it was not an _incorrect_ word.

The result certainly did not explain the cold sweat dappling the back of his neck. The ambient air temperature, a nippy 66 degrees Fahrenheit, did. He kept the Tower cool to keep the warm-blooded residents’ tempers and his cold-blooded machinery as cool as possible—nobody seemed in a friable mood below 68 degrees, he’d found, although he’d never brought it up in the open. He was sweating because he was agitated; it was a perfectly understandable reaction to the topic at hand. His sweat was cold because the room was cold. It was a perfectly explicable result, he consoled himself, venturing into the kitchen in a vague hunt for something to settle his stomach, broiling with unease. 

He felt awful, and he knew why. He’d won the argument—Romanoff agreed with him, and on the Avengers Team, there were only three votes that truly counted on mortal matters, and it was his, Romanoff’s, and Rogers’, and with their dual weight behind the Accords, it was clear which direction the team would follow—but arguing with Captain America always left a bad taste in his mouth. It was like drinking gasoline: winning was ending the game, not removing the bad blood spilled between them. 

It sucked. His stomach hurt. It ached, felt bad, revolted against the victory. The cold sweat on the back of his neck felt bad. _He_ felt bad. He wanted to drag Cap back in, to make him feel half as bad as Tony did, so they’d be on the same page, for once. The bastard didn’t ever feel bad—he was perfect, he didn’t sweat under normal conditions, didn’t run cold in ambient air temperatures of 66 degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe he went off to get a sweater, Tony thought, in wry, dry, unhappy amusement.

 _He_ wanted a sweater. He didn’t care how silly it would look in May, in New York City. He was Tony Stark. He could pull off any look, and it was his own home. But he was surrounded by important people, and he knew that it was important to look strong for them, dauntless, pushing himself off the counter, reaching for a glass, filling it with water. The last thing he needed was to come across as feeble of body, _feeble of mind_. Cap was Alcatraz, and he’d hold out against Romanoff and Tony if it meant making his point. Tony had to _look strong_ , or Cap would win over those who would not follow Tony Stark into the jaws of death.

Besides, he reminded himself unsympathetically, forcing down the water, he’d start nursing gray hairs, with premature senior-citizen behavior like _that_. It wouldn’t even help, in the end; it was only a stop-gap measure. 

He longed, far more extremely and honestly, for a warm bed to crawl into. He felt like he had woken up in the middle of the night for an argument. He wanted to sleep off the poison of a badly-won argument and wait for Cap to come to his senses. 

And Cap _would_ —come to his senses, that was. They were a _team_. They never broke, not like this. Cap would come around. Given time. Which they had, in abundance—the signing was in ten hours.

Plenty of time. Rogers could sulk for six of them and still be on time. _Come around, you bastard_ , Tony thought moodily, setting down his glass, ignoring his shaky hand. He was done drinking gasoline; Cap was an adult, he had to see reason. He _had_ to see reason.

Swallowing air, Tony shut his eyes, the weight of a profound exhaustion that had nothing to do with the Accords pressing on him for a moment, making it almost impossible to rally. He didn’t look at his watch, didn’t see the reading tick briefly to 49, 47, 44, and hold at 52. “Stark?” Wilson called. “You all right?”

“Peachy,” he replied, opening his eyes, forcing himself to stand up straight, heart pounding in his chest, _rallying_. He thought, _Drink another water, it’s just like a hangover. Drink enough, the headache goes away_. That was how he took care of the occasional migraine, but nothing about this felt like a _migraine_. 

There was no aura, no warning light—no pleasant wave from an unpleasant shadow with a clawed hand extended towards him, waiting for him at the end of a short road, a one-way path and no-going-backwards. There was nothing for the specter but inevitable convergence as he clasped its smoky hand and let its claws sink in and hold on, hold on, while he gritted his teeth as it bled him for hours, or days, or however long it chose, before it finally let him go and disappeared as though it never was. 

A migraine was a monster holding him in place. He could find no monster, anywhere. Even reaching for it, feeling for it, the pain in his head felt like dull, damp, crackling, heavy, wet stones where he expected to find nail beds. The pain was filling up the finite space in his skull, rattling thickly, uncomfortably, far exceeding the tolerable background noise, pressing forth into excruciating territory, but it was not the familiar stake and chisel that he knew. A migraine by any other name was not a migraine.

But the _quality_ of the headache, of the overall _wrongness_ , was staggering. _Drink something,_ he counseled himself, because he was dreading what would happen if he left his empty, acidic stomach alone for too long. Fishing around, he found a Ginger Ale, cracked it open, and guzzled like he had ninety seconds to empty it or surrender it to airport security. He finished it. 

Then he caught Rhodey’s eye and scowled. Rhodey’s face was still very hard, a bulwark of support, of _I stand with Tony Stark_ —and on the opposite side of the room, Tony had needed that, needed that badly, and appreciated it, commended the man who could stand right behind Captain America and defy him—but the lines in Rhodey’s face were visibly changing, softening. Rhodey was concerned, and Wilson was watching him, picking up on the cue like the Falcon he was named after, following Rhodey’s line of sight to—Romanoff. Thank God for diversion tactics. _Don’t you dare reveal me_ , Tony warned Rhodes without opening his mouth, jaw set.

“Perhaps,” the Vision began, astute, quiet, almost echoing in the silence, “it would be amenable to bring Captain Rogers back for further discussion. Seeing as we have some time, with our flight plan prearranged.”

“Oh, he’s gone,” Wilson said, voice torn between proud, bitter, and undisguised glee. “Good fucking luck gettin’ him back on stage.”

Romanoff cut him a look that chiseled glass. Sobered, Wilson said, “Am I wrong?”

Romanoff rose. Then she cast a pointed glance Tony’s way, because her radar was absolutely uncanny, and frowned. “You should sit down,” she advised, her voice strangely serious. Like there was a bomb strapped to his chest, and she didn’t want him to see it. He resisted the urge to look down, because he could clearly see in his periphery that there was no such thing, and if there was a spider or other creepy crawly, he was quite sure he didn’t _want_ to see it, would rather die in blissful ignorance than know he was in mortal danger from an arachnid. 

Tony gritted his teeth, leveraged himself pointedly, defiantly, up onto the countertop, and arched both eyebrows. The altitude change was a mistake, and he could feel it, immediately. The cold sweat clinging to the back of his shirt was demoted to a low priority on the unpleasant scale as his heart gave a single emphatic _thump_ , sparklers crackling across his chest. Unconsciously, he reached up to press on the arc reactor, but the immediate sharpness passed quickly, and he managed to divert his hand to the countertop before he could complete the motion. In a low voice, he said simply, “Plane leaves in thirty minutes. No exceptions.”

 _Get to work. I wait for no one_.

His cold attitude did the trick, at least; with a candid little huff, Wilson turned to Romanoff and said, “You wanna—” but Romanoff shook her head and left.

Barton drawled out in his big, Dad-with-a-lot-of-misbehaving-kids’ voice, “We really comin’ to this?”

Tony said nothing. The silence dragged. Barton lounged in his chair, looking at them all. He wore bemused indifference well, like he’d expected this to go to hell as soon as he’d heard it. _Of course you did. Cynic_ , Tony thought, wanting to snap at him, that they were a team, that they _could_ be a team, that just because they were a time bomb didn’t mean they were doomed. He kept his mouth shut, afraid opening it would only cause trouble. Not for Barton—to hell with Barton, he could use a good dressing-down. He was more afraid his unsettled stomach wouldn’t stay put for long. He did not move his hands from the counter, perfectly balanced. On his left wrist, the watch faithfully recorded 50. 

44

41.

Rhodey finally said, from the other end of a tin can, “Tony, you should sit down.”

 _I’m already sitting down_ , Tony didn’t snap at him, but only because they were in mixed company, friend and foe. He did glare in open anger, defiantly leveraging himself to his feet, careful to keep a hand on the counter for balance as the world fuzzed, briefly, like he’d stood up too quickly. 

He felt—wrong. Weird. _Weird_ was better than _wrong_. _Wrong_ was unsettling, _wrong_ was _frightening_. _Weird_ was basically normal for him, what with the whole “car battery in my chest” thing. It was the world’s weirdest prosthetic, and his body _hated_ it. Made it very plain. _Weird_ was a Tuesday in Tony Stark’s body. Everything was a bit sideways. He just felt especially weird, like somebody had pulled a few plugs loose, and he didn’t know which ones or how to put them back, and maybe he’d need to rest up to compensate until he could get the dayshift on them. _It is daytime_. 

“I’m gonna go find the super kids,” Tony announced, waving a hand dismissively, pushing back the sleeve to check the time. “Twenty-eight minutes,” he warned. He didn’t panic, not even a little, at 68 BPM.

Perfectly normal. Certainly matched how hard his heart seemed to be beating, and it was well within the normal range, nothing whatsoever to write home about. The weirdness was all in his head, clearly. He was fine. He was _fine_. 

He flexed his hand, shook down his sleeve with a little vigor in the vain hope of reviving it. His left arm was always sore these days. Always. He couldn’t feel it most of the time, so he didn’t use it as a metric for anything. It meant nothing that he really, _really_ couldn’t feel it now. Excessive numbness and normal numbness were frankly nearly indistinguishable. And pain was pain; he was often in pain of one sort or another, and he wasn’t getting younger.

 _Don’t panic. Panicking makes everything worse_.

Afghanistan taught him that.

Sauntering off with abundant calm to track Romanoff and Rogers, he tugged compulsively at his shirt collar, wondering why he felt like the ice was breaking underneath his feet, anyway.

 _Quit bein’ a baby and get your shit together_.

So he quit bein’ a baby, put it firmly out of mind, and almost completely ignored his own heart attack.

* * *

A feeling of dread. Noun. _This_.

Crumpled over, one hand pressed hard to the arc reactor, a _wave_ of something, not like the monster with its familiar hand extended, a pain indescribable and bearable only in its duration, in its awareness that _it will not kill you_ —but something utterly _alien_ , something completely jarring and unexpected, it literally _staggered_ him. 

Between one step and the next, he was jolting, gripping the arc reactor. He caught a glimpse of the watch, saw 45, and thought, _That’s low_. It felt low, too, and explained why his vision seemed to be blurring out, why he couldn’t really catch his breath. It lasted just two seconds, but it was terrifying, like sliding off a cliff, his hands gripping the rocky edge in a death grip as the vaguest approximation of normalcy shuttered back into place.

 _You’re okay_. And he was. He was sweating in greater earnest, and his breath was coming in short, panicked gasps, but he felt— _all right_. Like he really had stepped off a cliff, just for a _moment_ , and caught himself. He didn’t look at the watch, afraid of what he would see, afraid of what it might tell him, listening only to his body instead. He felt chilled, and unsteady, and the miserable burn of bile was heavy in his gut, but he also stayed on his feet. He stayed on his feet, and the bile did not rise to the back of his throat, and his vision was clear.

_How many days has it been since you slept?_

Clearly, he’d been overdoing it—too much caffeine, too little sleep, some combination of analgesics and overwork driving overtaxed body into pandemonium. But this was just another yellow light, he realized, not a red light. _Warning shot_. It certainly startled him, like gunfire in the mountains, but he wasn’t the target of true ire, was in no real danger. 

He let out a little, lighthearted laugh, breathless but distinctly relieved. The heaviness in his chest, tightening like a vice, actually seemed to loosen with the conviction of his own mirth. Even the cold sweat dappled on his back didn’t seem so _insidious_. It was the Tower, after all. To hell with the warm-blooded gods and super-men among them, he’d crank the temperature up to _72_ and let them all burn.

Giggling, amused at his own daring-do, in his _own home_ , and how improbable it was that certified room temperature was piping hot by Avengers’ standards, he pulled himself together, and asked, “F.R.I.D.A.Y., where are they?”

“Who, sir?” responded F.R.I.D.A.Y.

“Romanoff—” He grunted suddenly, gripping the reactor at a sudden _kicked_ feeling, a thin sound escaping him involuntarily, exactly like he’d been struck, before he rallied. He always rallied, and rallied well. “Rogers,” he finished.

“North stairwell,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied.

“Thank you.”

* * *

_Were_ being the keyword.

Rogers nearly bowled him over as Tony opened the door at the same moment that Rogers moved to step through it.

With inhumanly fast reflexes, Rogers caught him, steadied him, let him go, all in such a span that Tony knew he had been nearly bowled over, could physically feel the impression where he had connected with Rogers and the fading imprint of hands on him, but he hadn’t really _processed_ it all happening, not in real time. “You,” he began, then swallowed, quelling an odd hiccup that rose in his chest, holding up a hand to call for a pause before finishing, “have impeccable timing.”

Rogers didn’t share in his amusement. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, voice low, expression immovable.

Tony—well, _scowled_ was an understatement. All overtures of friendly conversation simply collapsed in scornful disapproval, because God _dammit_ , couldn’t the man take a hint? Couldn’t anyone take a Goddamn hint? _There’s a lot wrong with me. It’s none of your business_. “Could ask the same about _you_ ,” he retorted, and managed to actually focus _away_ from the nausea like a stone in his throat well enough on Rogers’ face, devoid of all emotion. “Are you _trying_ to tear the Avengers apart or is this the inevitable accident?” he steamed, needing to expel the poison before it burned a hole through him. 

Tony didn’t care that Romanoff was just out of sight, didn’t care that he was the emotional one here, the two of them as soulless as the soldiers they were bred to be. Someone had to be _alive_. Let it be him: he’d take one for the team. This was _for the team_ , dammit. 

“You wanna be the one to ruin everything we’ve made in the last four years?” Tony demanded. “Because that’s what you’re gonna _do_ , if you don’t come with us. You’re going to—” He snarled when Rogers put out a hand and directed him out of the way, snapping, “Get your hands off me.” They were already off, and that was the infuriating thing—Rogers was there and gone, a ghost, moving Tony where he wanted him to move just so he could walk away.

And that was what he was doing. _Walking away_. “You walk away from this,” Tony spat, his anger nearly suffocating in its intensity, body shaking with it, “you fucking walk and there is _no coming back from this_ , Rogers. You get back here.”

Rogers kept walking, not deigning to respond. “Get back here!” Tony demanded in a howl, not caring how it made him sound, heart pounding, needing to be _heard_ , to be understood, because fuck it all if he was going to let Rogers _walk_. “You don’t get to walk away from this! From _us_!”

Finally, the bastard paused. Breathing hard, Tony blew out, “We’re family. Aren’t we? Or aren’t we?” He inhaled sharply, demanding, “This is the _only way_. Do you get that? There’s no other option, there’s no _third way_. It’s this or the Avengers are _done_. You get that?” The tense lines of Rogers’ back, rock solid—marble solid, not even a person but something carved by the Greeks—did not move, yielding nothing. 

“You understand? What’s at risk here?” Tony pressed, shouting, furious. “It’s not about _pride_ , people are going to _die_ —” He swallowed hard, clenching his right hand, the only good hand he had, into a fist so tight it trembled, and stared at the unmoving back down the hallway, spitting, “This isn’t nineteen-forty-fucking-two anymore, Cap. You can’t go rogue. They’ll put you _down_. We need—” He swallowed, because he needed to say it, and he didn’t want to say it, and he swallowed, again, and found himself saying it, again: “we need, we _need_ you, Rogers.” His voice was barely a hiss, a furious little whisper, angry at himself for saying it the moment he said it, for putting the idea into the world, because it was the last piece of ammo he needed to give his opposing team right now.

_We’ll fall apart without you. What happened to ‘win, lose, we do it together’?_

He didn’t want to do it alone. He’d done his whole life alone, and it was a tough hand to play. Doing the _Avengers_ alone? Or, inconceivably, being forced to _oppose_ Cap, to actually hunt the stubborn bastard down for insubordination? The bile burned in his gut. He could swallow his own pride, a little, for this. “I don’t—” He swallowed, but the words were too much, this time, and he was almost grateful for small mercies. He didn’t know how he would have recovered from _I don’t want to hurt you_. “I need you to do this. For them. Not _you_. Them.” The words were diamond-edged, _rough_. Sharp enough to cut, utterly unbending to persuasion.

 _This isn’t about you today, Cap. This is about the rest of the world, the one you live in. This is about your family. This is about_ our _family_.

He wanted to cry, in a way he hadn’t wanted to since he was a _child_ , which was insane, literally, this was breaking him, this was where Tony Stark fell. It was ridiculous, but he could blame it on the trembling feeling inside him, the desperate feeling that left him exposed and raw and painfully unprepared for Cap’s unmoving back, and he didn’t know what he’d do if Cap walked. 

Drag him back, if he had to. He _couldn’t_ let him walk, period. He couldn’t let this be where the Avengers ended, no matter what. There was no lose scenario he could live with. If the world had thrown its moral weight behind the Sokovia Accords, then Tony Stark could, too. A-hundred-and-seventeen countries were ready to sign. _This is what’s happening. C’mon. This is what’s happening, and you need to_ —

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve Rogers said and, Tony thought, in a small way that probably mattered in some moral tallying way, at least he was sincerely sorry about it. He was never anything but sincere.

And, Tony had to admit, in the same standing-at-a-distance way, he himself wasn’t moving an inch, either. _Impasse_. That was the word for it. _Irreconcilable_ was another, but that one put a much sharper lump in his throat, made it hard to breathe. Made him want to crumple, made him want to throw something at the bastard’s back, to make him pay for existing in Tony’s life if _this_ is what it would come to. 

_Nothing. We’re nothing to you. Are we? Expendable. You can drop us._

_I can’t drop you. Don’t go._

Rogers was already gone. He had made his choice: he had made peace with it, had made peace with the idea of leaving them behind. It was _Tony_ who couldn’t lose him; it was not the other way around. 

Bitter disappointment and rage roiled in Tony’s chest like a toxic plume as he seethed, in desperate animal need to Tare the scales, to leave them both in a bad way so he wouldn’t be the only one aching inside, “Fine. _Fine_. Get out. Leave. Be a damn vigilante, and see what _happens_. Watch the world _crucify_ you.” 

His voice shivered, teetering on the edge of stronger, incoherent emotion. He was breathing hard, couldn’t seem to stop shaking. “And when you run out of places to run, you know, you _know_ , that there’s gonna be people hunting you down. Waiting to bring you in, and _muzzle_ you. And you’re not gonna have a single damn _word_ in, then. That what you want?”

“It’s why I can’t _sign_ ,” Cap retorted, short, but not clipped. As toneless as a news reel. _And in other news, the Hindenburg went up in flames_. There was an incongruence to the magnitude of the event and the casual reporting tone that jarred Tony. He wished, suddenly and badly, that he could see Rogers’ face. He wished far more than anything in that particular moment that he could sit down as his legs began to shake. “I can’t—I’m sorry, Tony,” he repeated, and he did turn, his face still utterly expressionless. “I don’t want to—do this,” he said, simply, and Tony cosigned it, completely, wanted nothing more than to _meeting adjourn_ the whole day, crawl into bed like he’d fantasized, and sleep till tomorrow. It was two PM. Close enough, right?

“Too bad,” he croaked instead, and Rogers finally _looked_ at him, really looked at him, focusing in, and he frowned. It wasn’t the little polite furrow elicited by tasteless twenty-first century jokes made at his expense but a genuinely concerned downturned lip, and it preceded the deepest, sincerest tone Tony had ever heard from him, a tonality so night-and-day from his prior words it left him with vertigo:

“What’s going on?”

Tony wanted to say, _My fucking family’s falling apart, you’re an asshole, the Accords are eating me alive, I want to do the right thing just as badly as you do, I’m not the bad guy here, sue me if I just want world peace, put your damn thumbprint on the box or I will fucking make you, get on the damn line and sign before the weight of the world comes down on you, please don’t do this to me to us to you, I have a headache Cap what’s new?,_ and _something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s really, really wrong,_ but all that came out was a whisper of a sound. It resembled, “ _Hah_.” It was not a laugh, but a disbelieving noise, a scoff, a cry, a punched-out little sound that did not have any place in his home, in his _name_. He folded his arms over his chest, and they pressed into the arc reactor, and his chest was too tender, sharp like a box full of needles had been scattered over it. He grimaced and lowered his arms.

Cap was there, disconcertingly quickly, right in front of him. His whole demeanor had changed, the argument gone—not forgiven, not paused, simply _gone_ , as if it was relegated to yesterday, and he needed to focus on right now. Tony took an involuntary step back, needing distance. He felt very unsteady. He wished that Romanoff wasn’t there, fucking _staring_. He wasn’t recovering this one well. He looked unstable, weak, needing, _needing_. Cap didn’t need him, Cap didn’t need _anyone_. He’d survived seventy years on his own. Tony Stark was the people-person, who always had to have _somebody_ on his team. He couldn’t imagine losing Cap, and it was that thought, that jarring thought, that inexpressibly horrible thought, that drove him, suddenly and with almost childish dread, two steps closer, instead.

Arm’s reach. Too close. Way too close, _way_ too fucking close, but he could almost _feel_ the grayness creeping over him, the sudden urgency of ice breaking all at once, of a crumbling cliff, of a little red dot on the back of his shoulder, the staggering realization as his heart _pulsed_ that _this is no warning shot_. He looked at Cap, and he could not read his own eyes in metamorphic blue, condensed beyond all readable emotion into the quiet, compressed, immovable sea-stone gray, but he didn’t shove Cap back as violently as he meant to when a hand reached out to steady him. He gripped it, and maybe he meant to shove it back, but it was the only thing to hold onto. Cap said, once: “Tony?” Then there was a crackling noise in his ears, a wash of static, and his voice seemed much quieter and farther away as he repeated, “Tony?”

A firm, warm arm slid around his back, propping him up. _Finally_ , he thought, in detached mirth, like it was tomorrow, and nothing had changed, and they were free to be them again, carefree heroes, never colliding on issues they could not reconcile, _a chair_.

He wanted to laugh at his own good humor, but there was no sound. He was still, disconcertingly, aware of his own body. He did not lose consciousness, but his ability to communicate was circling down a drain as he swallowed, mouth full of ash, and said, slowly and clearly so as not to be misheard or misunderstood, “My left arm is numb. Is that normal?”

He saw Rogers’ gaze flick to Romanoff’s, briefly, the confusion there almost comical. He thought, _My humor is wasted on you_. He thought, _I’m nothing to you, let me down. Let me die. Won’t that make this easy?_ But then his chest was tightening, prickling, like a balloon full of nails, and he got out, “I think I am having a cardiac event.” There. No need to alert the presses or overwhelm the masses. He swayed on his feet, and announced, again through an invisible walkie-talkie, “I’m going to sit down now.”

Rogers didn’t let him, though, holding onto him and speaking to Romanoff, too fast for Tony to follow. “What?” he said, and he heard the heaviness in the word, like he’d eaten an entire gallon of ice cream and he was trying to speak, every speech organ frozen. “What?”

“I said, _get you to a hospital_ ,” Rogers enunciated, again missing words, but Tony thought maybe he was missing words, and he thought, _Like hell, I have to sign the Accords_ , and he wanted to say, _This is a trick, isn’t it? Goddammit, Rogers_. He was not sure he voiced it, though, instead breathing out shortly, deeply, and, though his left arm was impossibly heavy and almost not there at all, he managed to lift it, see the watch, and look at 42 BPM with vague amusement.

 _And the beast shows itself_. Of course, it skittered up to a breezy 56 even as he watched, pounding away, overtime, and that made his vision wobbly and gray, and he was more aware of the feel of Rogers’ arm, and the abstraction of temporal space, feet on the concrete hallway rather than seconds on a clock.

 _Do you know why I used concrete?_ he wanted to state. _Because wood burns._

It felt like a wonderful punchline to something, but he wasn’t sure there was much of a joke there. It was in its infancy, fermenting. It meant something, maybe, eventually. Cap never got his jokes, anyway. 

Tony realized, belatedly, that his feet were moving. He was glad they were moving, because he was not sure he would be able to live if they were not moving, shuffling, sliding, just a little, _it’s not laziness if it is, in fact, the most energy-conservative means of walking_.

Then his feet stopped moving. Full stop, they gave up the ghost, and he might have keeled over, might have blacked out, except all things were not created equal, and he only went about three-quarters under the ice. He could distinctly feel his body being picked up like a fifty-pound bag of horse feed, tossed over one shoulder with supreme ease. 

_How elegant,_ he thought, aware of a nauseatingly rapid descent in an elevator, and a pair of quiet voices. Had to be Romanoff and Rogers, but could it be them? He swore on his _life_ that he would recognize their voices, but he could not pick any of the words out of the muck, could not seem to make the dream reality. He was very tired, but the arc reactor was digging uncomfortably into his own chest, keeping him adamantly present. _Ow_.

If he could pop it loose, he was reasonably sure blissful unconsciousness would follow. Only problem was, he could not pop it loose, any sooner than he could wrestle his arms free from an elephant. Neither was pinioned, but he was deadweight, and then, disconcertingly, he was being slung across the backseat of a car, and he thought, _I have a flight in twenty minutes_. He needed to open his eyes. Except now that he was actually horizontal, it seemed like every system gave up the ghost at once, and he had one moment to think, _Well, shit_ , and then real darkness swept over him.

* * *

A feeling of dread, noun. A cave in Afghanistan, and a trough full of water.

Beheld not once, not twice, not three times, no, no. That was the story the media needed to hear, the sanitized story: everything was _once_ , and endurable, and then over. But in the desert, nothing was really _once_ , and endurable, and then over. It was all, everywhere, and anytime, and not even slightly bearable. Yinsen counted, because he didn’t want to count, didn’t make any halfhearted attempts to. He never counted. But Yinsen did. And Tony finally asked him, on the night of their escape, and Yinsen told him.

Over the course of ninety-three days, they used water torture fifteen times. Oh, they tried other, less creative tortures, plenty of times, and sometimes let a whole week pass with cooperative silence, but the water-torture was the worst, and therefore it was their favorite. It was the most frightening, the least predictable, and they saved it for special occasions, when he was already lower than low and in need of one good day. It kept him _orderly_. It kept him obedient. It kept him mentally unstable, in constant terror, unable to get true headway. He was a genius, a masterful tactician. In their bruising hands, he was flesh and bone and animal instinct.

A short session might last a few seconds. Just enough to send him into a frenzy, give him a _taste_ of it, foul lukewarm water and the notion of more, a concept so frightening they barely needed to do anything before he was ready to do anything for them. All real resistance had broken down weeks before; he was not in a fighting mood, even if they were in a vengeful spirit. 

Short length was their go-to approach, because it left him well enough to work for the rest of the evening, terrified enough to stay in line but not broken. Not cored open, like a jaw wrenched past the point of no return. 

But some days, when they didn’t want anything out of him, or when they were pissed off at him or the Universe, they could drag it out for well over an hour. Each submersion was, on the whole, short, carefully spaced. It had probably taken years of _practice_ to get it right; God only knew how many unfortunate souls had died defining that metric. 

The submersions were shorter but the torture was excruciating, because the gaps could last three, nine, upwards of _twenty minutes_ , but as he knelt on hard stone, dripping and shaking and gasping for breath, he knew it wasn’t over because they weren’t taking him back to Yinsen. 

The only warning was barely imminent, just the slightest tensing of muscles in the hands still gripping him on either side. He barely noticed it; he wasn’t superhuman. He wasn’t a fucking rabbit: he couldn’t stay wire tight for very long. Eventually, through sheer exhaustion, he relaxed, just enough that he inhaled the water they shoved him into.

People wanted to believe they’d be stoic under torture, or break so quickly that it wouldn’t hurt after a while. But the torturers knew how to make sure it was as terrifying the sixth time as it was the first time, by tricking him into a false sense of security, by letting the _anticipation_ build. His dread for that trough of water was greater than any mortal fear he had faced before or since. He was reasonably sure that the sight of a horse trough might send him into paroxysms; he dreaded the day it came up, somehow, _someway_ , in the grand scheme of things. Swimming pools and oceans, these were different. Bathtubs, these were scary, close. 

Troughs, he would never again consider innocuous objects. They were killing grounds. They were _torture grounds_. A killing ground could be merciful, quick—an execution chamber, a slaughterhouse. 

There was nothing humane about a horse trough used to torture a man.

The heaviness on Tony’s chest was more like the poison water he remembered than the light, familiarly warm dappling in the shower. Worse, he could feel the downward pressure, incredible, a physical weight keeping him flat on his back. He was on a flat surface, and it was like lying in bed, but it was also _nothing_ like lying in bed, because he was always very careful to curl onto his side. 

Lying on his back was too dangerous: it exposed the car battery in his chest for all the world to tinker with. Even with his precautions, he still dreamed about disembodied, bone-white hands reaching for the reactor, prying at it, wires and all, with restless urgency. They didn’t care how much tugging and wrenching it took to get it free. They _wanted_ it. They would take it by force. He could only watch in paralyzed terror, occasionally able to thrash but never able to banish the image, until finally, _finally_ he cast off the curtains of the darkness, and—

With a wrong swallow of air that left him coughing into his arm and turning on his side, aware of a faintly plastic scent in the back of his throat, Tony regained consciousness with a wretched discombobulation of emotions. _Where am I? What’s happening? Don’t hurt me. Get this out of me_. He was reaching for the first tube he found, dangling from his nose, the source of the strange plastic smell, a harmless nasal cannula, _perfectly procedure,_ but he snapped it away with such _violence_ , with such _rigor_ , he was shaking with terror, like it was a venomous snake that had gone for his throat. They’d put a feeding tube in him, once, and he was, he couldn’t, _not again, not again, no, no, no—_

It didn’t matter that his sensory input was halfway correct, that he was clearly in a _sterile_ environment, white walls and gray popcorn texturized ceilings. Nothing at all like charcoal scented sandstone and the tink-tink-tink of an anvil on stone and the unexpected anguished cry of a fellow prisoner in the desert in the distance. He jerked, and then, suddenly, he heard a breathtakingly familiar voice say, “Tony, _Tony_. Easy, it’s okay. I’m here.” _Rhodes_. 

Rhodey had his hands near the rail, not touching Tony’s own hands, and Tony was grateful for that, so grateful he thought he might cry and swallowed convulsively instead, shaking when he saw the IV taped to the back of his right hand, _where the hell did that come from?_ , already reaching for it, with childish fear, _don’t take it out_ warring with _get it out of me_. 

Rhodey’s calm voice interceded, “Tony, that’s your pain meds, you don’t want to lose that. Look at me. Look at me.” He gulped, hand sliding to his own wrist, his stupid, _stupid_ left hand, numb, _more of a passenger these days_ , gripping it so tightly he thought he could pop the IV out that way, how terribly morbid. He forced himself, still gripping his right hand in a death grip, to look at Rhodey. “Yeah. It’s me. I’m here. Right with you.” He said clearly and evenly, “Right here. You want some water? Another blanket? I know, this isn’t a fun place to wake up to, but you’re all right.”

Tony stared at him, hungrier for the words than their meaning, eyes skipping to the white board behind him. CCU, _Room #311_. Well, that spoiled that number for good. CCU? What the hell? He couldn’t parcel it out, had never even heard of it before, so he skipped to the next line. _Doctor: Michelo. Nurse: Katy. CNA: Allen_. Who the hell _were_ these people? And how did he have names on a board of people he had not met who were, more disturbingly than even the notion that he had not met them, _assigned to his care_? They’d marked the second saddest face on the pain scale for him, which he thought was greatly exaggerated—“I don’t feel any pain,” he told Rhodey, the words like ice cream, slow, cold, not slurred but not entirely clipped and sharp like he wanted them to be.

Rhodey squeezed the rail and sank into the chair he’d pulled up, curbside, to the bed. “Well, that’s good. That means morphine still works,” he said drolly, looking at Tony with refreshing calm, not like he was a lab rat or a dying patient in the ICU, but like he was Tony Stark, indomitable will, stubborn bastard, menace and friend. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Rhodey asked, holding up a peace sign.

Tony, rather than answering, mirrored him with his right hand, releasing his death grip. He exhaled deeply. Rhodey actually smiled, a warm thing, relieved and big, like he’d been waiting all day for it. “Yeah, you’ll live,” he said warmly.

That sobered Tony up. “What,” he began, and swallowed, mouth very dry, “what,” he repeated, licking his lips, before giving up and requesting, “Drink. Please. On the rocks.”

“Sure, once you’re out of the hospital for at least a week,” Rhodey said, getting up. Tony didn’t bother to follow his journey to the opposite side of the room, reading the rest of the board. _Goals: Angio Rehab, Post-Op :)_

Post-Op. Post-Op. Taking the Dixie cup that Rhodey offered with a faint noise of interest and gratitude, Tony swished it down, swallowed his mouthful, and narrowly missed a perfectly timed spit-take when he rasped, “ _Post-op?_ ”

* * *

Sedation, Tony yawned, was a magical thing. 

It was magical in terms of its numbing qualities: its suppression of _I am having a panic attack_ and its general indifference to the shock of _you did what to who now?_

“You had a heart attack,” Rhodey said, in that blunt but comforting way of his that bespoke, _now, the limb is detached, but, luckily, we put it on ice, and we_ can _reattach it_ , which was not good, not by a long shot, but, in a world of terrible things, at least he had somehow blinked through the _and the limb is detached_ segment of the evening. Was it even _possible_ to black out that hard? No—actually, as Rhodes was helpfully explaining, it was more like, _They ran an EKG and confirmed what Cap and Romanoff suspected, so they decided to go with an angioplasty because it’s the least invasive way of stenting a blockage and—are you listening?_

Tony slurped noisily at his water, drowning out Rhodey’s claim of, “As your medical proxy,” to make him pause. “As your medical proxy,” Rhodey resumed calmly, when Tony had finished his tiny cup of water and returned it, shaking his head a little in refusal for another refill, “it was a pretty easy call to make when given the options.”

Head still a wee bit—fuzzy, like a curled up armadillo was fuzzy, not soft but soft-edged, nothing clearly defined between the world and his thoughts, _blending_ , he shooed the cannula further off the gurney and murmured, “Well, I’m sure you did the best with what you could. But _did_ you get the almond milk?”

“You don’t drink almond milk, Tony.”

Sniffing, Tony said, “You’ve never gotten it.”

Sighing in quiet fondness, Rhodes said, “If that’s what you want, fine.” Then: “You don’t do anything in halves, do you, Tony?”

Shaking his head cheerfully, fumbling—dropping—the attached TV cord, Tony pouted at it as it disappeared over the bed and declared dramatically, “Lost. To all time. Here, I was hoping for WWE.”

“You don’t watch wrestling.”

“Stop pigeon-typing me,” Tony grunted, fumbling blindly over the edge for the remote, “and help me, Obi . . . Wan—whoever-the-fuck-you-are.”

Rhodes barked a laugh and said, “Bossy as ever. Don’t you wanna see some friendly faces?”

Acid churned in Tony’s stomach. “Oh God. What faces? Clowns? Did you bring clowns? I don’t want to find out if I have a clown pho—”

“I think the only clown is Barton,” Rhodey said, holding up both hands in assurance before returning the remote to the bedside. Tony’s hand was shaking in earnest, though, when he grabbed it and dropped it over the edge a second time. Rhodey’s expression was soft as he added, “You don’t _have_ to—”

“No, it’s less _why are they_ than _how_ and also maybe _what the fuck_ ,” Tony said, not caring that there were missing dots in his evaluation. He’d fucked up. That, he knew. He’d fucked up so hard. “I fucked up,” he said aloud.

Rhodey risked laying a hand on the bedside railing, not on his hand, but it didn’t matter because Tony immediately crushed his weak left hand over it, _needing_ it, and Rhodey said seriously, “No, you didn’t. This kind of thing could’ve happened to _anybody_. And you’re lucky, too—if we got you on a plane, I don’t imagine we’d’ve had a Tony Stark to park by the time we landed.”

Tony shuddered, gripping his hand. “I don’t like this story,” he said, soft but serious.

Rhodey turned his hand over, palm warm and dry, immensely comforting. He had to be stressed out—the stressed lines, Tony could see, were apparent around his eyes, and he was just starting to realize that it was _seven PM_ , how in the _fuck_ —but he was hiding it admirably well as he said simply, “Then I won’t tell it. You’re here, Tony. With me. With them.” A beat. “If you want. You don’t have to see them. I can tell them to go home.”

Tony licked his lips. “Tell them,” he began, and then, clearing his throat, “tell them to do their damn _jobs_.” _That goes doubly for me._ Shit. This was bad. “What day is it?” he asked, flicking his gaze to the board, again. 5/6. 5/6? Had it been 5/6 when he’d been kidnapped and put under the _knife_?

“Tony, _Tony_ ,” Rhodey encouraged, squeezing his hand gently. _Still numb_ , he reflected, a touch ruefully, although that could have been anything from cold dread to his recovering heart to morphine to permanent damage. The medical term was G.O.K.: God Only Knew. “Easy, Tony. You’re okay. Everything’s fine.”

There was a knock on the door, and Tony jolted. Then, a moment later, it opened, admitting a man who could have passed for an old school newspaper-deliverer, were it not for the blue scrubs. “Mr. Stark? Hi, I’m Allen.”

“Hi, Allen,” Rhodey said, when Tony narrowed his eyes distrustfully.

“Like the chipmunk?” Tony rasped.

Allen—if that _was_ his real name; who named their kid _Allen?_ —smiled indulgently. “That’s Alvin, Tony,” Rhodey reminded. 

“Yes. Alvin,” Tony said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the newcomer. “Alvin, do you even know who I _am_?”

‘Alvin’ made a show of checking the clipboard in hand before replying, with a perfect poker face: “Anthony Stark?”

Scrunching up his nose in open disapproval, Tony said slowly, “Don’t allege us. It’s Tony. Alvin.”

“Right. Tony.” Smiling with irrepressible good cheer, ‘Alvin’ said, “So, I’m sure you have questions. First, I’d like to get some quick vitals, including blood pressure—”

“No,” Tony said simply.

‘Alvin’ assured, “It doesn’t hurt. It’s just a soft plastic cuff that—”

“I know what it is,” Tony deadpanned. “Still no.”

‘Alvin’ looked momentarily bamboozled. Candidly, he deflected, “All right. We’ll focus on the other stuff first.”

“And the other stuff _never_ ,” Tony affirmed sternly. “No blood pressure. No _bloodwork_. That’s next on your list, right?”

‘Alvin’ cocked his head a little, glancing at Rhodey, who assured, “This is normal.”

“Sure,” ‘Alvin’ said, reading the room. “Well, it’s in your best interests, Tony—”

Grunting in disapproval, Tony said, “Thin ice, Alvin.”

‘Alvin’ repeated steadily, “It’s in your best interests to work with us. We’re happy to accommodate you as much as possible, but there’s still steps that we’d like to take before we’re ready to send you home, even though you’re clearly in a better state than you were when you came in—how’s your pain level, by the way? Scale of one to ten?”

Tony growled audibly. “Alvin,” he said, in a very low tone, “I am not going to make _any_ statements, regarding my health until I have your verbal . . . nay, _written_ —confirmation . . . that no medical tests . . . will be performed without _my_ explicit consent.”

Looking momentarily perplexed, ‘Alvin’ said, “Sure thing, Mr. Stark.” That was more fucking _like_ it. ‘Alvin’ looked like he could be ten years his junior; who was he to call him _Tony,_ anyway? “I can write that right up. Would it be okay if I took a quick look at the machines? I won’t take any new measurements, Scout’s honor.”

 _Scout’s honor_. Feeling sour but unable to think of a reason to deny him other than _for the sake of being a douchebag_ , Tony said shortly, “Make it quick.”

“Thanks. I’ll get that right up for you, Mr. Stark.” ‘Alvin’ was quick, at least, assuring, “This should only take a few minutes. Anything I can get you in the meantime? Water, another blanket?”

Even more sour, Tony said, “I wanna be—free. Get me out and all is forgiven.”

“That’s the goal here. First, we want to get you up and walking, then deal with a few other things, and then we’ll see about getting you sent home in a couple days. Tonight is more about resting up and recovering from surgery.” Nodding at the remote that Rhodey generously returned to Tony’s hand, ‘Alvin’ said lastly, “You can hit the call button if you need me.”

“Thank you, Alvin.”

“No problem. I’ll be back shortly.”

As soon as the door closed, Rhodey said dryly, “I see your congeniality is the first thing to reappear.”

“I . . . hate him,” Tony said sulkily, not caring that he _sounded_ sulky as he reached for the empty Dixie cup and chucked it across the room in impotent rage. “I . . . hate _you_. What the _fuck_ , Rhodes?”

With a benevolent sigh, Rhodey leaned back in his chair and insisted, “Did the only thing I could, Tony, with the cards I had. And it worked. I want to emphasize that. It _worked_. I wasn’t gonna lose you.”

Tony looked at him, long and hard, feeling small and cold and defeated and relieved and over the moon at once. Invincible. Broken. “You should have let me—” he began, but he didn’t finish, staring down at his hands, his numb left hand, his trussed up right hand. His whole body was a landscape of modern technology and no sense of privacy. The gown was familiarly appalling. He didn’t want to consider what he couldn’t see, wires and tubes, cords, _scars_. He’d scream if there was a scar. Oh, God, hands in his chest, the nightmare was _real_ —

“Tony,” Rhodey insisted, leaning forward, hand on the railing. Tony didn’t take it. Rhodey left it where it was. “Hey. There’s no scar. They didn’t even touch the reactor. You know, the team, they were really helpful in—”

Tony shut his eyes. “Fuck them,” he whispered. “I hate—all of you.”

“I know you’re upset.”

“Fuck . . . you. You know _nothing_.” He sniffled. He managed, in teeth-grinding anger, “If I cry . . . it’s because . . . I’m so, so fucking _angry_ . . . I can’t help it. . . . Got it?”

“Got it.” Rhodey didn’t reach for his hand, but Tony knew he wanted to. “I’m sorry, Tony. If there were any other way—”

Tony drew in a deep breath. Then he let it go. He felt sick, slow, heavy. Weird memories of conversations he didn’t have suddenly pressed on the forefront of his mind, and he blurted out, “Is this the first time I woke up?” He remembered having his appendix taken out, long ago, remembered hearing about a conversation with a doctor that he was told had happened, and he didn’t remember a goddamn _word_ of it. He had just found himself alone in a recovery room, gently confused. Not understanding what had happened, and never once recalling those missing words, but that he had been told that they had transpired. Drugs were a hell of a drug.

Rhodey assured calmly, almost in personal relief, like he could finally share the burden of hiding it from Tony, “No. Been in and out a few times.” Tony lifted his bound right hand and covered both eyes with it, in chagrin, shame, appalment. “Hey. Don’t worry, I only stole your social security number and your Myspace password. None of the other blackmail was worth keeping.” Tony let out a little huff of laughter that was dangerously close to a sniffle. He hated hospitals. He hated the _unreal_. The unknown. The unknowable. “Dum-E’s birthday’s coming up. You were talkin’ about painting him fire-engine red. Like the suit, I guess.”

“No,” Tony said, not remembering the conversation but the _instinct_ as he said simply, “It’s what he wants to be when he grows up.”

A beat. Then, letting out a long breath that was almost a laugh, too, Rhodey said, “Never change, Tony.”

* * *

Fucking Steve Rogers, in the flesh. Of course he was here. Where else would he be?

“There’s my knight in shining armor,” Tony sighed, going for candid dryness. Rhodey had taken a brief lunch break—if “9 PM” counted as lunch, which he said it did; “I haven’t eaten lunch” was his justification, and it was a late lunch at 2 PM, but Tony was scarcely one to judge, but he’d had _emergency surgery_ , so he couldn’t be faulted for not eating, _praised_ , in fact, for his foresight and wisdom—and he was alone with the super-soldier who could, if he so desired, kill him. After all these nice medical people had done, he thought, caving to kingly indifference, presiding over his gurney, his little kingdom in the Coronary Care Unit, bedecked in three heated blankets like Montezuma.

He was a god. Let the super-soldier try to flap him, grim and dire as he was, looking at Tony in utter, almost disconcerting silence for one very long minute.

Finally, resisting the urge to squirm visibly, Tony pawed for the remote and said, “Do you like Sesame Street? You look like an _Ernie the Grunch_ type—”

Were Rhodey there to correct his heinous defamation of Oscar the Grouch’s character, he would have, but as it was just the out-of-touch super-soldier and the la la land genius to contend with, the silence dragged interminably. Finally, prying for a hint of gravity in a moon world of morphine, Tony said slowly, seriously, “I am okay.”

And Steve Rogers’ eyes, they didn’t spillover with tears, but they turned slowly, slowly _red_ , shinier. Uh oh. Blinking rapidly, bewildered and slightly unsteady at the sight of Steve Rogers on the verge of emotional collapse—he had seen Steve Rogers watch _war footage_ with less emotion—Tony managed, “I, um. My dad never hugged me as a kid, so I don’t actually know what to do when a grown man cries. Gesundheit?” He held out the topmost blanket in a vague, indefinable offering.

Rogers stared down at it for a long moment, contemplating the unoffered. A single manly tear _rolled down his cheek_. Tony could hear the heart rate monitor recording every tick of his own heart, felt like he was staring at a rabbit who had broken its back in a bear trap, and still twitched with life. _What do I do? What do I do?_ For one irrational moment, he almost called for help, literally, figuring anyone was better at this than him, even _Alvin the underfed chipmunk_ was better, but his fingers did not move, and the impulse passed. Slowly, like he was trying to keep marbles from tumbling out of his mouth, he asked, “Do you want a hug?”

Rogers didn’t move. Tony said, “My eyes are up here,” and, finally, Rogers did, in fact, look up. He didn’t look like a kicked puppy; he looked like he’d had to put down the beloved family dog. “Steve?” he said, trying on the word like a new pair of shoes, a little bit strange but not bad, not uncomfortable, just new. “Rogers? There something I—”

Swallowing visibly, Steve Rogers said hoarsely, “I’m sorry. I’m not—like this.”

Huffing, gesturing eloquently with his right hand at his entire person, Tony said, “Buddy, if we’re passing out awards, I’ve got you beat by a _mile_.” Yawning, he said through it, “I have java juice, what’s your excuse?”

“Carter’s dead.”

Tony’s jaw clicked audibly when he shut it. The slow _thunk, thunk, thunk_ of his newly repaired heart—noninvasively repaired, Rhodey _promised_ , no hands in his chest, just a catheter in places he didn’t want to imagine, and a non-metal polymer that had taken away the elephant sitting on his chest—seemed incredibly loud in his own ears, but the monitor was silenced. “I’m sorry,” he began, not as a platitude but as a question, _repeat that?_ “What?”

“I thought.” Steve Rogers looked at him, and he could see the crackling wall in his own chest on full display in front of him. “I thought, you were.” He swallowed again. He looked away. Tony watched him, feeling his own eyes burning.

 _Carter’s dead_. They weren’t close—she’d had Alzheimer’s in her later years, and he hadn’t wanted to upset her, and for all her connections to Captain America, the name was as much blood in the water as much as it was a joy to him—but she was still _somebody_ to him. A friend of his father’s. A delightful woman, on the few occasions they had passed in youth. It was extremely weird to think of her as no longer existing in the world, but he was not sure he was even capable of sadness.

Steve was. He paced over to the far side of the room, the wall without the white board and its names, pressed both arms against it, and rested his forehead against them for a moment, hiding. It was the saddest semblance of a self-hug Tony had ever seen.

He insisted, “Come here.” When Steve didn’t move, scarcely able to believe he was saying it, the morphine was saying it, the shock and awe of _heart surgery_ was saying it, the java juice of being alive was saying as he lied shamelessly, “I need it.”

Steve melted away from the wall, easy as that, and Tony did flinch, a little, when he was suddenly _there_ , big and heavy and warm, but he didn’t press Tony against the gurney, didn’t crowd him. No: he lowered the railing, sat on the edge, and, with one steady arm, pulled Tony forward, letting him lean forward, into him. The skittish jolt Tony gave was nothing more than a temporary shiver, absorbed in the steady, subsurface tremors emitting from Steve’s skin.

“I thought I lost you,” Steve croaked, swallowing a noise as he held Tony steadily but not _tightly_ , not _too close_ , just a loose monkey hold that Tony could slip out of, like he knew Tony couldn’t escape him if Steve truly trapped him. It was enough to set his heart beating faster under normal circumstances, but it was impossible to feel even the slightest impulse of terror as he shuffled the littlest bit closer he could, pressing his face against a warm, soft-shirted shoulder, the warm sweater and bed he’d been looking for, all along. _A hug. I need a hug_. 

Carefully, keenly aware of wires and potential entanglement, he slung his right arm around Steve’s hips, low so there was less risk if he jerked away suddenly than high, resting a hand against his side while Steve cradled him in one arm and shook, faintly, against him. “I’m so glad you’re—” But that was more than Steve could say, briefly tightening his hold, emotions he could not voice, stamping down hard, and Tony understood. He mashed his forehead harder against the comfortingly dark space of his shoulder, eyes shut. He breathed in slowly, and all he could smell was _Steve_. Not the hospital, but Steve’s laundry detergent and the warmth of his skin beneath it.

It was very homey. It was _so_ homey, so breathtakingly homey, and he was terrified he made a noise, not knowing what it would be. A laugh— _nothing like a near-death experience to remind you what shitty friends we are, eh? Have we ever hugged? God, I should hug you more; what if_ you _died?_ —or a sob, he didn’t know. He just held on, feeling his own unsteadiness ease even as Steve shivered on and on and on, silently, interminably, holding him, cradling him in one arm while Tony’s own snuck under his resting arm, pressed against his side.

They must have made a sight, and he thought, _World peace_ , and did laugh, just a little, and Steve grunted, half-inquisitive, half-reflex, pulling back after a long moment to regard him, eyes still red and damp but focused on him. Tony gripped his shirt with his right hand, tightly. “Don’t go,” he said, murmured, not sure why he was saying it, exactly. “Please.”

Steve cupped his head in both hands very, very gently, and brushed his thumbs against his cheeks, three smooth strokes that had him closing his eyes and tilting his head gently against _his_ left palm. It wasn’t numb. Probably. “No,” Steve said, low, but sure, a promise. “Never.” Briefly, almost not there at all, Tony felt Steve’s forehead press against his own, resting there, reaffirming something. What, he did not know. 

Sleep was pressing heavily on him, and he had a feeling, a delightful premonition, that in spite of everything, he would sleep long hours tonight, that between heavy, restful blinks, he could find a place of peace, finally. There would be no dreams of terror, not here, not tonight. 

Steve said quietly, “I’ll do whatever it takes, Tony. To keep us, _us_.”

And it was its own peace. Nodding gently, Tony said, “Knew you had it in you.” He hummed, blinking lazily but not quite all the way open, tipping his head more emphatically against Steve’s hand, almost purring as he stroked his thumb over his cheek. “Today, tomorrow, whatever’s next,” he sighed, “I won’t let you down. I promise.”

“You never do,” Steve said, earnest and so devastatingly close. “We’ve been—working. We’re gonna work this out. Together. Like we always should.”

Nodding a little, Tony yawned, “I love you, too.”

He expected Steve to brush it off as the morphine talking—and it was, in a large way; he played his cards tight to his chest, even when he was being _playful_ —but he just cupped Tony’s head in two big gentle paws, pressed a kiss to Tony’s forehead, and said, “Go to sleep.”

And it was, in its own weird way, _I love you, too_.

* * *

Easy? No. Never, ever easy. Nothing in life ever was. It was complicated. Phone calls. Lots of phone calls, largely consisting of Steve putting on his Captain America voice and saying, _You think my guy—who, need I remind you, is in the hospital, following emergency heart surgery—needs this kind of stress? Your key supporter? No. No, this takes precedence_.

There were talks. Long talks. More emotions than they knew what to do with. Tony might have shed a few of his own manly tears once or twice in the middle, but he’d already sworn everyone to secrecy, and they probably didn’t count if they were buried against Steve’s shoulder, anyway. Steve didn’t seem to count them against him: he was busy with the phone, handling everything, sparing the occasional educational glance at Tony and the unrevealing, “Yes, sir,” or “No, ma’am” for the phone. Lots of those calls seemed to be three hours’ worth of affirmations and negations, concluded by firm, enigmatic expressions, designed not to stress Tony’s healing heart. 

Steve seemed more than happy to go to bat for him, exuding patience and attentiveness, like he was playing the world’s most relaxing game of solitaire as he sat in a cramped hospital chair, one knee camped comfortably over the other, and repeated his mantras. On the side, he played thumb war with Tony. He let Tony win about half the time—mostly because he seemed to think Tony needed the morale boost—and Tony savored the chance to hold onto him.

Was it easy? No. Steve was wild and free, yearning for the great wide yonder. He chafed under the slightest hint of a yoke. He seemed indefinably sad at the thought of surrendering the Avengers to an authoritative body. _The safest hands are still our own_ wasn’t just political for him; it was personal, a reflection of their own co-leadership. _Haven’t we done a good job leading this team?_

And Tony could understand that, respect that. Politics represented his least favorite arena in life. No party ever walked away truly satisfied and the fights were long and hard. It was often necessary, yet miserable business.

And yet, with their goals so aligned, even with their perspectives so _misaligned_ , Tony couldn’t help but think that their house, however chaotic, would stand. They both wanted it to. They’d make it stand, no matter what. They could act with unity, not because it was perfect or right or the best solution, but because it was what fate necessitated. The Sokovia Accords demanded a response. They responded.

Not on the day of the signing, when no Avenger was present. They’d been at a hospital in New York the night before, waiting to see if one of their own would even survive to the end of it. He had, but not one of them had budged an inch to recoup lost time. It was easy to follow the lead of the only leader still standing, who was emphatic in his decision, _stay together_. And Tony, in a small selfish way, could be grateful for that, even if he could sigh, and wish they had done the easy thing, in the _struggle_ that would follow for order amid chaos.

But not against each other. It was a struggle against the world, yes. The world was not ready for the Avengers, or aliens, or the future as Tony Stark imagined it. But that was okay. They would hodgepodge it, pull it together, brick-by-brick, board-by-board, if need be. They would make it work. They would do it _right_.

It was not easy, to survive, to endure.

Worth it?

Slumping into the space next to Tony on his bed with a heavy exhale, Steve murmured, “I hate funerals.”

Curling an arm around Steve’s head, Tony let him crawl under it and hide. “Beginning to hate naps,” he admitted, even though it was two AM and he should have been dead to the world—figuratively, this time. 

Steve sighed against his chest. “I missed you,” he husked out, sounding exhausted and so relieved to be home, sad and grateful, too. _It’s over_. The funeral was. The rest of the fight? Scratching the back of Steve’s neck lightly, Tony didn’t comment on it. “Wish I didn’t have to leave you—”

“No. I’m glad. You did. For her,” Tony said, saying each phrase cleanly, carefully. And he was. He meant it. It was good. It was important. That Steve was _there_ for her funeral, just as he was _there_ in the hospital room. There were places in the world Steve Rogers had to be, and it humbled Tony that, despite everything it had meant to the Avengers, he had not chosen to be in the room with the Sokovia Accords signers, but he _had_ chosen to be in the CCU waiting room of the hospital Tony Stark was in. He said quietly, “Now just . . . stay for a while.”

Exhaling, Steve curved an arm so, so gently around his back, flattening his palm between Tony’s shoulder blades and promising, “Long as forever, Tony.”

Dozing, Tony mused, “Is forever really that long?”

Steve rumbled back, “Go to sleep, Tony.”

“I love you, too.” And he meant it. 

“I love you,” Steve murmured back, hushed, reverent, like he wouldn’t get to say the words twice. “Now go to sleep.”

And Tony did, with a tuft of golden hair under his chin, and its owner listening to his ever-beating heart.


End file.
